


A Hunk of Burnin' Love

by AgentCK8



Category: Leverage
Genre: Gen, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-23 02:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17071961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentCK8/pseuds/AgentCK8
Summary: Eliot (the hunk of the title) is trapped below a burning building (the burning).  An attempt to leave a message for his teammates brings him to some realizations (I'll let you guess).





	A Hunk of Burnin' Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BurningTea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, Burning Tea! I hope you like this. I took your prompt about Eliot being trapped underground, and added a burning building on top of him. I hope you don't mind.

Eliot shoved an unconscious Parker through the blown out window and into Hardison's arms. 

“Here! Get her the hell out of here!” he rasped, his usually gravely voice made even more raspy by the smoke he'd inhaled on his way through the burning building. 

Hardison juggled Parker until she was settled against him. “Come on, Eliot. Get out of there! The whole place is going up!”

Eliot shook his head. “Naw, man. Gibson is still in here somewhere. I can't let anybody burn to death, Hardison, even if he is a crooked sumbitch.”

The team had been after Elvis Gibson, a shady investment banker who had stolen their client's retirement fund, for several weeks. Even knowing that he was a devious, underhanded crook, Eliot could not have that kind of suffering on his conscience. Not again.

“Yeah, I figured as much.” Hardison shifted Parker to the ground so that he could hand Eliot the linen scarf that he'd layered over his stylish t shirt that morning. He'd taken a moment to pour a bottle of water over it before he left the van. “Take this. You can wrap it around your face. Keep some smoke out of your lungs.”

Eliot accepted the scarf with a nod of thanks. Hardison kept talking. “You get five minutes, then you'd better be out of there. Ya know that the cops are going to show up with the fire department.”

Eliot nodded again, knowing that talking would likely set off a spate of coughing. He headed back toward the flames as Hardison called out behind him. “Five minutes, Eliot! Don't make me come in there after you!” 

Eliot shook his head as he walked away. Yeah, right, Hardison was going to come bursting into a burning building. The hacker's strongest instinct was that of self preservation. 

Eliot wrapped the damp scarf around his head, covering his nose and mouth, and took off at a trot to check Gibson's office. It was on the third floor of this nearly century old, but recently refurbished, building. He headed up the closest stairs to the office, the ones that Gibson would have come down if he'd tried to leave the building. Ignoring the screaming of his lungs, Eliot took the stairs three at a time, determined to make it to the top before the smoke got too thick and the flames got too close. He reached the door, then, wrapping the bottom of his shirt around his hand for protection, he grabbed the door knob. There was a loud noise. Louder than the roar of the fire, even. And then, darkness. Eliot's consciousness was swept away in the collapse of a wall, taking the fire-ravaged floor beneath it down into the sub-basement, 4 floors below, and taking Eliot along with it. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 

The world came back in small, incremental pieces. First, Eliot had to figure out where he was. He was sure he'd never set foot in this particular concrete block room before. 

Next came the pain. His head was pounding, and his ribs felt broken, but that wasn't all that unusual for a man with his personal history of fights. 

The leg pain, though, that was new. Careful poking and prodding, teamed with an ill-advised attempt to move, confirmed his suspicion that he had a badly broken femur. Walking out of here was going to be next to impossible. 

He was becoming light-headed, but he couldn't put that down to the shallow breathing necessitated by the broken ribs. Looking up, where the ceiling should have been, he realized that the fire was confined to the floors above him, but the flames were literally sucking the oxygen out of the air around him. If he didn't get out of here soon, he was going to die in this filthy, sweltering room. If he was lucky, he would slowly suffocate instead of burning alive. 

There was something else nagging at the back of his mind. Dammit, it was Hardison. If there was a time that he was determined to go against his better instincts and put his life on the line, it was guaranteed to be when Eliot or Parker were in danger. Eliot needed to make sure Hardison stayed out of this death trap. 

“Hardison!” Eliot coughed, until he felt his broken rib ends rub against each other. “Dammit, Hardison!” He reached up to confirm what he already knew. He'd lost his earbud on his tumble through the bowels of the building that was threatening to fall in on his head. 

Even though he knew there was next to no chance that it would work, he shifted carefully onto his bad leg in order to pull the phone from his pocket. Just like he thought, no bars. 

Then, a memory came to him, one of Parker, all bundled up against the cold, and crying, because she thought she'd never be good enough for Hardison. Eliot knew how she felt. Somehow, the younger man had managed to maintain a purity to his soul that Eliot had lost so long ago. He was pretty sure that none of the team was really good enough for Hardison. 

A less than prudent move of his injured leg brought his mind back to the present with a jerk. Double checking his phone's battery life, he pulled up the video chatting app that Hardison had downloaded for him a few months ago. It was one that Hardison had written himself, and was a secure as the hacker could make it. Eliot could record a message for Parker and Hardison, and it would sit there, waiting, until someone got the phone out of the basement, then, hopefully, the message would go through. Even if it didn't, he knew Hardison would find it. Hardison would never stop looking until he found some closure. It was up to him to make sure that something was there to be found.

Eliot took a few moments to do his best to remove all signs of pain from his face. It was bad enough that Parker and Hardison would have to see this. The least he could do was to make it as painless for them as possible. He took a deep breath, held it for a five count, then slowly let it go before hitting the record button. 

“Hey, guys,” he wheezed, trying his best too look confident. “So, it looks like I may not be coming back out of this one, and that's okay. I know that we'd all talked about plans for when we were too old to do this anymore, but we all know that hitters don't usually get to get old.”

He had to stop and cough, and then he had to catch his breath because of the pain from coughing. 

“Just in case Parker doesn't know where the safe is in my house, it's under the floorboards in the front closet. There's a list of names and phone numbers in there, just in case Quinn is busy, or y'all decide you don't want to work together. I trust every person on that list with my life, and, more important, yours. Just promise me that you'll call one of them. If I find out that you two boneheads are pulling jobs without protection, I swear, I'll find a way to come back and haunt your asses.”

Eliot had to pause to calm his breathing, as he didn't think he had it in him to survive another coughing fit without puking. He'd puked with broken ribs before, and that was a vicious cycle of pain that he didn't have time for right now. 

“I just, I...I wanted you two to know...” Eliot took a breath and tried again. “You two are my family. I never thought I'd have that again, but you gave it to me. After, after the army, and, um, Moreau, I really thought that I'd be alone forever, and I was okay with that. Then, I get offered a one time job working with a wild haired madman, a smart-assed young hacker who was too big for his britches, and a hot blonde who was twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag. Then they added in a beautiful grifter, and my life changed. Just for the record, Hardison, you're still a smart-ass. But you're also the smartest man I've ever met. I never had a real brother, but you come as close as anyone I've ever met.”

Eliot paused. The air was getting thin, and it was getting harder to talk, but he had to finish this. “Parker, darlin', I don't know if you got saner, or I got crazier, or if our crazies just matched up, but sometimes I think you understand me better than anyone has since my mamma died.”

He tried to take as big a breath as he could. “If you don't show this to Nate and Sophie, you can tell them that I owe them both more than I could repay in a thousand lifetimes. Without...them...I would not have...this family that has...brought me so much...happiness. Y'all take care of each other.”

Eliot shook his head, trying to order his thoughts. The oxygen levels must be really, really low by now. “I love y'all.”

The last image on the video was of Eliot's head falling back against the wall behind him as his eyes rolled back. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 

The next thing Eliot was aware of was the steady beeping of the monitors, and the hiss of the oxygen cannula resting under his nose. Swiftly following that was the sensation of being watched. He slowly opened his eyes to find Parker staring at him, practically nose to nose. Against his own will, Eliot flinched, which jarred his ribs. Sucking in a pained breath, Eliot darted his eyes around the room to find Hardison standing on the opposite side of the bed from the one Parker was sitting on. 

“What...” Eliot coughed, glad that his ribs had been wrapped securely, decreasing the pain he felt. Parker gently spooned a few ice chips into his mouth. The cool fluid easing down his throat felt wonderful. 

“What happened?” Hardison supplied for him. “What happened was that those firemen I'd warned you were on the way found you. It was almost too late. Dammit, Eliot, you can't keep thinking that you can save everyone. It's gonna get you killed one day.”

Eliot kept waiting for Hardison to give him hell about the video, but it never happened. Maybe he hadn't seen it yet. Hell, maybe he hadn't even recorded it correctly. Eliot wasn't the most natural techie in the world, and the lack of oxygen had been making him pretty light-headed. By the time the nurses ran Hardison and Parker out of his room, he was feeling pretty good about all of his heart-felt declarations never seeing the light of day. 

At least until Parker stuck her head back in the door from the hallway with an impish grin. “Eliot? By the way, we love you, too.”


End file.
